What Love Was
by liahime
Summary: This is what love was. Walking in the rain, sneezing, and not being able to ever let go.


_a new liahime production in celebration of the ending of a hiatus..._

_What Love Was._

"I mean, do you guys realize what it's like to like someone you can't be with?"

Sam spit out her soda, sending the drops of caffeine splattering into the air.

_Love can be a many splendored thing  
__Can't deny the joy it brings  
__A dozen roses, diamond rings  
__Dreams for sale and fairy tales_

Yeah.

She did.

She knew all about it. Thanks, keep the change, show yourself to the door and leave.

She didn't feel like thinking about it, but it kept popping up in the same way he did. It was something sweet, something that made her ice heart pound hard enough to start the thaw, something that was beautiful and stupid and sappy when it was all happening to _someone else_.

Something like this.

_It'll make you hear a symphony  
__And you just want the world to see  
__But like a drug that makes you blind  
__It'll fool ya every time_

And the thing that disgusted Sam was that she had tried to close off her heart. She had locked it and super-glued the key to a bowling ball and dropped it towards the deep ocean floor, to rust and never emerge.

And yet here it was, defying all laws of gravity and physics and her own worn out, tattered dignity, floating back up in cheerful grins and these tiny, replayed moments of memories inside of her head, laughing, living her life over and over again until it all wore down to one painful point.

She had had something, held it, loved it, and let it all go down the drain, not even reaching out as it was sucked away, remains staining what was left of her.

If there was one thing in this mess that she had made that she truly knew, it was that she, Sam Montgomery, was an absolute idiot.

_The trouble with love is  
__It can tear you up inside_

"_Please, girls like that are a dime a dozen. "_

"_How much change you got?" _

They had been friends, more than friends, falling closer and closer together until she was screaming with a half joy and half anger at their slow, patient pace that they were easing into, speeding up bit by bit, inch by inch- completely unchallenged by any of those ten dozen a dollar girls who wouldn't give either the time of the day-

And then puberty hit.

He suddenly shot up, got more than one chest hair, voice deepened and shoulders widened, leaving him with a million dollars and the dime a dozen girls clamoring to be the one he chose.

And she was left behind, lost in the masses, staring back at what slowness, what patience had let go.

_Make your heart believe a lie  
__It's stronger than your pride_

She could have told him that she was the first one.

The only true one. One and only, true-to-the-very-end one.

The one who really loved him, the one who had given things up for, knew his secrets and his life; the one that had felt so close to him that he had _become _part of her breathing, her smiling, her love-sick idiocy.

But no.

Watching him kiss one beautiful Paulina under a lovers' moon, she had no time for reasoning, no stomach for trying to pound anything into his stupid thick skull. Any sense and cold logic Sam had ran away and died with her heart, shriveling up in sadness's teary brine.

Look. This is why she didn't fall in love. She wasn't a natural poet, and didn't want to become one anytime soon, blabbering on about brine. Brine was for pickles, not for human hearts that were bloody and gory and not cute and dimpled as a Paulina could be.

But Love didn't care.

_The trouble with love is  
__It doesn't care how fast you fall  
__And you can't refuse the call  
__See you've got no say at all_

Maybe she was justified.

After all, he was willing to almost give up his fighting, his secret life, letting the world go into chaos for this shallow _girlfriend_, and for her, his girl FRIEND- he wouldn't give up a hamburger for. And how true and comradely and friends-till-the-end was that, huh?

So when she slapped him under the waning lovers' moonglow, she should have been happy. Not guilty. It was something long overdue- a closing to what they had, what they lost, what they sent down the drain together. It was finished now.

Right?

Right.

_Now I was once a fool it's true  
__I played the game by all the rules  
__But now my world's a deeper blue  
__I'm sadder but I'm wiser too_

So it was square one for her now, a clean slate. She was supposed to be feeling free right now. Glad that she had slapped the carnivorous jerk who was slobbering all over a pretty girl's lips, forgetting completely about his former friend.

Back to her original roots, her beliefs. Newer, tougher, the revision Sam, version two. Darker, truer to herself than she had ever been. Seeking truth and recycling in life and dealing with hard logical things that were solid and not at all beautiful. Free thinking, free living, and salads.

She was free.

Free as a bird that had jumped out of the cage of stupid crushes- liberated. Let go. Alive again, finding her truth again-

But were some birds sad when they left their cage? They were supposed to be happy.

And so it couldn't be, shouldn't be that in her lonely, glorious solitude, she was sad.

_I swore I'd never love again  
__I swore my heart would never mend  
__Said love wasn't worth the pain  
__But then I hear it call my name_

If he called her name, she wouldn't look back.

If he asked her why she did what she did, she wouldn't apologize.

If he sent hounds, or worse, Tucker, after her, she would just throw a leg of chicken behind her and walk away.

Serves the jerk right, leaving her for the charms and advantages a successful puberty gives a guy.

So if he tried to apologize in the hall, she told herself, she wouldn't turn an inch. If he showered her with praise and cheap flattery, she wouldn't bat an eyelash. No matter how absolutely funny and gorgeous and wonderful he was, she wouldn't open up- just stay in herself, closed to any thaw of any type.

If he went down on bended knees, dumping Paulina, begging her to take him back as he professed his undying and eternal love-

Then she would know that she was dreaming.

_Every time I turn around  
__I think I've got it all figured out  
__My heart keeps callin'  
__And I keep on fallin'  
__Over and over again  
__This sad story always ends the same  
__Me standin' in the pourin' rain  
__It seems no matter what I do_

_It tears my heart in two._

But of course, being the absolute idiotic insensitive _guy, _that he was, he wasn't coming.

Which rendered all of her plans useless, leaving her in the rain, sneezing underneath an umbrella, feeling guilty as she stomped through puddles, daring them to soak her.

It was windy, it was raining in sheets, and she should have been feeling angry and annoyed with herself. She had gone and fallen for a stereotypical impossible somewhere over the rainbow ending, and of course- she must deserve it- she had crashed into a concrete wall.

Revenge could be taken. She could still pick herself up, thumb her nose, and walk away. The world could know his secrets, the realities of his alter-ego superhero life. All of them, spilled out in the open.

She sneezed and the wind snatched her umbrella, teasing it upwards and away. She ran with it, pulling the plastic handle back towards her, against the wind's grasp. Tugging, she pulled her umbrella back down to earth, firmly over her head.

And yet rain kept falling.

Looking up at her umbrella, she saw that it had turned inside out, rainwater pooling inside. Pull as she might, it was stuck that way, metal ribs arching upwards in a bowl of flimsy plastic. It was stuck that way, the way Danny was going to be stuck, and it would stay forever, in perpetual uselessness that she couldn't bring herself to throw away.

She was frustrated to the breaking point with this- with all of the combined, with all of the little points that made up one huge point. _Danny. Did. Not. Love. Her. _And yet she still couldn't bring herself to any actual revenge. Because she was an idiot, maybe. Because she was too tired, too hurt to continue, perhaps.

And she was still his _friend, _curse it all. His friend that was a girl, that had laughed and worried for him and had gone through all of the crazy life they had together with him.

Angry, frustrated, and still not letting herself let go, Sam walked on, carrying the broken umbrella and letting rain soak into her hair as she sneezed and coughed her way home, wet and miserable, not wanting to- _unable to-_ let go.

This is what love was.

* * *

a stab at writing Danny Phantom! I haven't been posting very much, and I felt like breaking my hiatus today. Hope it wasn't too bad I'm still kinda rusty..  
So here's liahime's early-morning, raw copy, everyone. Review away, please

-liahime.


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